


Doc Brown called, he wants his catchphrase back

by DaisyK



Series: Doncha' Think It's Time? [1]
Category: 11/22/63 - Stephen King, IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 11/22/63 is a side plot, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Fix-It, Multi, Pennywise (IT) is His Own Warning, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Richie Tozier's Internalized Homophobia, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, Sort Of, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, Time Travel, until it's not, way too many back to the future jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22349251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyK/pseuds/DaisyK
Summary: Richie knows a lot of things after running out on Stan's funeral. He knows he can't stand the clawing sympathy of his friends, no matter how well-meaning. He knows Patty Uris is trying to piece together the circumstances leading to her husband's sudden suicide. He knows Stan remembered more than the rest of them about what happened in Derry. He knows the turtle is dead.Oh, and he knows there is a time portal in the back of a diner in Lisbon Falls.(Yes, this is the 'Richie and Patty team up and yell at Maturin' fic I've been promising to write for a solid 2 months now.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier & Patricia Blum Uris
Series: Doncha' Think It's Time? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608751
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65





	Doc Brown called, he wants his catchphrase back

There were five strangers at her husband’s funeral.

The one in the glasses wasn’t using a coaster, and she watched with growing apprehension as he gripped his glass, unconsciously rubbing the moisture into their dining table. Their $500 dining table. Which wasn’t a lot, not anymore, but when they’d bought it it had seemed like a small fortune.

It was 2004, and Stan’s accounting business was growing rapidly. He had known it would, with a certainty so fierce it almost scared her. It happened so slowly they barely noticed at first, but with time their combined income exited the realm of ‘part-time teacher and fresh-faced accountant’ and become something else, something almost mythical. 

Their IKEA dining table was wobbling again. As Patty crouched on the floor, rearranging the collection of neatly folded paper towels meant to steady the leg, Stan spoke above her in his matter-of-fact way. “Patty, we could just… buy a new table…” She looked up at him, still holding the table leg steady as she worked, and realised with wonder that he was right. They _could_ just buy a new table. 

And so they did, giddy and excited and a little guilty. Those feelings would fade with time, and before long the thought of spending $500 would not fill them with anxiety. The floodgates had opened, and by 2016 the dining table was easily one of the cheapest pieces of furniture they owned.

_She_ owned.

And now she watched the glass being lifted off the surface, focusing on the ring of moisture she just _knew_ would leave a mark in the wood, and let herself pretend it was the only thing wrong. 

“Who are _they_?” her mother asked, eyeing the table with suspicion as she carefully rearranged the bureau. Patty watched her, trying to mentally map out where her knick-knacks had been so she could put them back once her mother left. She noticed a small jar positioned in a way that almost entirely blocked out Stan from her framed wedding photo, and had to physically bite her tongue as she turned her gaze to the table.

“I don’t know, Mom,” she lied.

She had known William Denbrough’s name, of course. Stan had been reading his books for months. He had called him _Big Bill_ , or once _Stuttering Bill_ , but he hadn’t told stories the way you do when you remember a childhood friend. No anecdotes or memories, just an off-hand comment saying they’d grown up together in Derry. She had known what to expect with Denbrough, and had not been surprised when a google search yielded pages upon pages of interviews, movie trailers, a Goodreads page, book reviews, the works.

  
She _hadn’t_ expected the same thing to happen when she typed in the other names from the letters. Ben Hanscom, ‘ _Perhaps the most promising young architect in America_ ’, had been the second search. That could be a coincidence. Two out of six being at the top of their field wasn’t outrageous, after all. By the time she’d looked up Beverly Rogan, nee Marsh, who turned out to have designed several of Patty’s nicer dresses, and famous comedian Richie Tozier, she knew something was not right.

The remaining names had somewhat eased her anxiety. Michael Hanlon’s results were what she’d expected from the lot of them. No facebook, which made finding him tricky, but there was a LinkedIn page from 2013 which claimed he was a part-time librarian at the Derry Public Library. No picture, no recent updates.

  
Edward Kaspbrak’s LinkedIn was much more extenside (and impressive) than Hanlon’s, meticulously documenting his employment and education history going back to 1994. It included a five-year stint as a chauffeur, and ended with a position in one of New York’s largest insurance firms. 

He had not made it to the funeral. And that, too, was odd. 

“They should show some respect,” her mother tutted as laughter broke out around the table.

“Mom, please,” Patty said. “They’re grieving in their own way.”

“You don’t even know who these people are,” she said, thoughtfully feeling an intricately wood-carved kiwi bird Patty had brought home from New Zealand in ‘07. She placed it in front of a photo from the same trip, obscuring Stan’s smiling face.

“It doesn’t matter,’’ Patty said. “They knew Stan.”

“Yes, well…” her mother said, in a tone that made Patty’s shoulders tense. A tone that said ‘ _Yes, well, we all thought we knew Stan, didn’t we_ ?’   
  


She had wanted her mother there, had even pushed the funeral back so she could fly down from New York, but now she wondered what on earth had possessed her. She had thought, stupidly, that her mother had grown to like Stan, even love him. But Ruth Blum’s love had always been conditional, and what Stanley had done, what Patty could not yet understand or accept that he had done, had rendered him unlovable.

Although she didn’t know them, Patty strongly suspected the only people who still loved Stan as much as she did were sitting around her dining table. They’d all come together, piling out of an UberXL to stand in the back, their heads bowed, tears streaking their solemn faces. They had spoken to nobody, made no condolences, brought no gifts. And although they were laughing together, they did not look like a group of people brought together to commemorate an old friend. 

“-and these flowers,” her mother said, now holding a bouquet of morose lilies brought in by Daniel What’s-his-name, scanning the bureau for a suitable spot. “What are you going to do with all of these, they’ll take over the house, Patsy.”

“It’s a nice gesture, Mom,” Patty said. _Googling ‘should I bring flowers to a Jewish funeral?’ would have been a nice gesture, too_. She pushed the thought aside, swallowed the bitter taste of it.

“But what will you _do_ with them, Patsy?”

She could read her mother, not quite like a book, but like her long-winded and frequently erratic emails. She supposed there was a pattern to her seemingly random subject changes, missing pieces in her train of thought that would clarify the connection. The implication, however, was clear. 

_What will you do now, Patsy? Your husband is dead - killed himself, can you believe it? - and you’re all alone. You’ve never been alone in your life, you got married so young. I told you not to marry him, didn’t I, Patsy? Didn’t I warn you?_

“I have plenty of vases,” she said. _I’ll find a way, mom_.

The laughter around the table had died down. Patty moved closer, leaning away from her mother’s voice. 

They were all looking at the man in the glasses, the comedian, with the same expressions she’d seen on every face that day. The suffocating sympathy - _pity_ \- of well-meaning friends. 

He did not meet their eyes, but moved his gaze to the empty chair beside him. When he lifted his glass off the table Patty did not look for the water ring, but watched as he swallowed his drink in one long gulp, followed the movement of his arm as he placed it back forcefully.

The woman beside him, Beverly, reached out to him, and he flinched at the unexpected touch. Her voice was soft, and Patty couldn’t make out the words, but whatever she had said must have upset him.

“I’m _fine_ , Bev!” he said, his voice loud and tense. The woman spoke again, and this time his response was inaudible. He shook his head and gripped his empty glass, reaching the other arm out to touch the back of the chair beside him. Pulling himself up, he turned his back on them.

She followed his movement across the room, gathering her courage. She’d hoped for this, but now that the chance was there she felt her legs grow heavy, her heart beat fast. She made an excuse to her mother (who had moved on from talking about flowers to commenting on the appropriateness of Stan’s colleagues outfits) and forced her obdurate legs to move.

He had his back to her, stood in front of the kitchen island perusing the collection of liquor bottles she’d haphazardly arranged. It was mainly scotch. Not that either of them drank scotch, but for some reason people insisted on gifting them bottles of the stuff. They were probably expensive bottles, although the only name she recognised was Glenfiddich.  
  


 _Look, Stanley,_ she thought. _I finally found a use for all that damn scotch._   
  


She grabbed an empty wine glass, turning toward the stranger who wasn’t a stranger, and forced her face into a neutral expression.

“May I join you?” she said, already placing her bag on the counter and pulling back a chair. The man turned to her, and for a moment he looked like he was about to tell her to fuck off and sit somewhere else, but his eyes softened as they met hers.

“Go ahead, I’m just grabbing a drink,” he said, turning his eyes back to the collection of bottles. 

“You’re one of his old friends, right? From Derry?’’ she said, keeping her voice light as she topped up her glass from the 2007 Gaja Barbaresco. It had been bought for next year’s wedding anniversary, their 20th, but what the hell did that matter now?

The man flinched, turning his head towards her as if he’d been slapped. His eyes were wide behind the cracked lenses of his glasses, looking almost… afraid?

“We haven’t met,” she plowed on, taking a sip of her wine. “I’m Stan’s-” _widow_ “-wife, Patty.” 

“Richie Tozier,” the man said, confirming what she already knew. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she replied, automatically, for what must be the hundredth time that day. “You, too.”

He turned away from her, picking out a bottle seemingly at random and topping up his empty glass. “Thank you. Stan was a good friend. I wish we could have stayed in touch.” His voice was thick, but there was something wrong with it, too. He sounded as if he was reading off a script, following a manual for How To Act At Your Estranged Childhood Friend’s Funeral. 

_Chapter One; Making Polite Conversation With The Deceased's Spouse._

She changed tactics.

“What happened to your glasses?” she said, keeping her voice casually interested.

“You should see the other guy,” Richie quipped. It _sounded_ like a joke, but Patty wasn’t too sure. It wasn’t just the broken glasses. Hanlon, the librarian, had carefully folded his jacket over the back of his chair, and his rolled up shirt sleeves revealed a bandaged left arm. The other’s injuries were not as dramatic. Scratches and bruises, red raw knuckles, winces at painful movements.

“Did you win?” she asked.

“Yeah, we won,” he said, voice laced with bitterness. He looked down at his drink again, contemplating.

“You know, it’s funny,” she said, keeping the conversation going, knowing he wouldn’t walk away as long as she kept talking. “He never talked about you. Any of you.”

Richie wouldn’t meet her eyes. “We lost touch, I guess.”

“You seem pretty close to me,” she replied, turning her gaze to the dining table, where laughter had broken out once again.

“It’s pretty recent. Listen, Patty, I should-”

“Just one more thing,” she said, trying for casual, but the words came out sounding desperate. Her hands shook as she opened her purse, pushing past the phone and wallet to close her fingers around the photocopied pages neatly folded at the bottom. She pulled the letters out, shuffling the one headed _Richie Tozier_ to the front. Her heart pounding, she played her ace. “What are these?”

Her hand shook as she held the pages out to him. He took them, confusion edged on his tired face, and started reading. She could see his eyes move across the hand-written page, could hear the words she had read over and over echoing in her mind.

  
_Richie Tozier,_

_I know what this must seem like, but this isn’t a suicide note._

She watched his face as he read. His expression remained neutral, curious, but by the end of the page he was blinking hard and fast, eyes shining. He closed them, took a deep breath, swallowed. His fingers were turning the pages, and when he’d touched each one his eyes opened up again, eyebrows furrowed. He flipped through the letters, looking, and brought another one to the front.

She was about to tell him they were all just about the same, almost exact copies, but something in his face stopped her. As he read the same words again, addressed to someone else, his features softened, the tired sadness breaking through. Tears streaked his face as he put the letters on the counter, turning away from her.

“Why was the only thing my husband left behind six letters for people I’ve never heard of?” she asked, unable to keep a note of pleading out of her voice. She wasn’t the crying type, never had been, but she felt a hot prickling build up behind her eyes as she watched him turn towards her, rubbing his face under the cracked glasses with one fast, aggressive movement.   
  
“Why did he write about ‘ _taking himself off the board_ ’? What was he afraid of?” Her voice was rising, and she knew it would crack any moment, but she couldn’t stop the questions she had held on to since _that day_. “Why was he having nightmares for months before he died? Why did mentioning Derry make him go all… weird and quiet? Why did one call make him-”

Her voice finally broke, the sentence ending in a strangled sob. She watched the stranger in front of her, bracing herself for what would come next. She needed answers, but knew she would probably get a nauseating combination of understanding words and sympathetic glances. ‘ _Patty, I know this is a difficult time for you_ ’, or ‘ _Patty, I understand what you’re going through_ ’, or, even worse, ‘ _Patty, I don’t know what you want me to say, I don’t know what any of this means. There is no secret or conspiracy, Stan was just crazy. He always was, how did you not see it? Why didn’t you help him?_ ’

What she didn’t expect was Richie leaning in closer, his brows furrowed and eyes wide with confused interest, asking in a voice laced with pressing insistence “Stan was having nightmares?”

“Yes.” 

He turned away again, and for a split second she was afraid he would leave her like that, but he picked up the photocopied letter at the top of the pile - the one addressed to Eddie Kaspbrak. His lips moved as he read, forming the shape of Stanley’s last words, and his eyes widened.

“I knew we’d all die,” he whispered, so softly it was nearly indistinguishable. Had she not known the contents of the letters off by heart she would not have been able to pick the words out. Then, with sudden understanding, he turned towards her. “Stan remembered,” he said, “He fucking, he-”

“Remembered _what_?” Patty asked, frustration and hope fighting for space in her chest.

“How long?” Richie asked, holding her gaze. “How long had he been having nightmares, how long had he remembered?”

  
“ _What_ did he remember?’’ Her voice was too loud, too insistent. 

She took another sip of wine, fixated on the tasting notes. What had the liquor store clerk said? _Cherry. Blackberry. Wood._ It just tasted like wine to her, but the focus calmed her anger.

“What was he afraid of, Richie?”

“Patty, please,” he said. He was gripping his glass so tightly she was afraid it might crack, his eyes shining with a frightening intensity. “I know this doesn’t make any sense, but it might be important.”

She held his determined gaze, and knew that to get anywhere she’d have to play along with whatever game this was. “Fine,” she sighed. “It started with that stupid book.”

“Yeah, Bill’s books make me want to die, too,” he said, and then winced. “Shit, I’m sorry…”

She cracked a small smile, feeling some of the tension lift from her shoulders. When was the last time she’d smiled? 

“They’re… not for me,” she said, diplomatically. “But it wasn’t a Denbrough book. He really liked those, although I think they made him a little sad. I figured it was just… you know, lost childhood, all that stuff… Anyway, it was The Epping Manuscript that freaked him out. That’s when the nightmares started.”

“The Epping Manuscript?”

“Yeah, remember three months ago when everyone thought time travel was real for, like, a day? When those kids dug up a book by some lake and put it on Reddit? It was everywhere.”

“I thought that was just some weird meme I didn’t get,” Richie said.

“It was, kind of. But the book was real. Some English teacher called Jake Epping wrote it and then buried it hoping it would be dug up in, like, 50 years or something and confuse everyone. He was pretty mad about it when it came out. Here, I’ll find it, give me a second.” She plunged her hand into her bag again, bringing out a phone and some reading glasses.

“But what’s that got to do with Stan?” Richie asked.

Patty shrugged. “I’m not sure, really. He was fine until he got to the part set in Derry. It was - _Oh, for God’s sake, no, I don’t want to sign up for your newsletter, just let me open the PDF_ \- It was small stuff at first. He’d recognise street names and things like that, and that was fine, but then there was the part about the-” 

*******

_“-clown. God, Patty, the clown.”_

_Stanley’s eyes were large and fearful as he looked at her. They were on the sofa, her marking an essay and him reading what she would later refer to as That Book._

_“What clown, honey?” she asked, looking up at his alarmed face with concern. His tone unnerved her, she could feel her shoulders buzzing with starting dread._

_“I don’t remember,” he replied, confusion edging his usually stoic face. “I do, but- it’s like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue. I know it’s_ there _, but I can’t…” He closed his eyes, brows furrowed._

_“Stan, honey, you’re scaring me.”_

_“The turtle couldn’t help us.”_

**_***_ **

“-clown,” she finished. Richie recoiled. The cracks in his glasses made his large eyes look fractured as they fixed her with that same fearful graze she had seen on Stan’s face. She was getting closer, she could feel it. “He said something about a turtle? But there’s nothing in the book about… Here, let me find it, give me a second.”

“The turtle is dead,” Richie said, his voice small and distant. She looked up at that, but he had already turned away from her, as if unaware he had spoken.

She searched the PDF for ‘clown’, and was brought to a familiar paragraph.

_“There's people who say it was some vag who's since moved on. Other folks say he was a local who dressed up like a_ _clown_ _to keep from being recognized. But it wasn't any homicidal maniac in a_ _clown_ _suit who killed the little Corcoran boy. The_ _clown_ _who did that murder was the kid's own father, if you can believe it.”_

Her hand shook as she passed her phone over. Countless re-readings had not brought her any clarity. Hopefully Richie could.

She watched him as he read, confusion edged on his face. He seemed to be connecting some invisible dots, marking a pattern she could not yet see. He was scrolling, eyes moving rapidly, and for a moment she thought he was going to read the whole book, all 700 pages, right there in front of her. Then he put the phone down, and turned to her with a wide, delirious gaze. 

“Do you know when he wrote this?” he asked. His voice was nearly level, but she could detect a faint tremor behind the facade.

“2011, I think. Why, what’s wrong?”

“Can I send this to myself?”

“Sure,” she said, still watching him intently. “Richie, what-”

“I’ve got to go,” he interrupted, and panic rose in her chest as he turned away from her, almost breaking his empty glass as he slammed it down on the counter. Her hand shot out without her permission, grabbing Richie’s wrist and squeezing it tight. 

“Richie, please,” she said, tightening her grasp, willing him to look at her. “Please. What happened to my husband?”

He turned to her, and her grip faltered. Something in his face made her want to recoil, as if she’d touched a hot stove. Nevertheless she held his gaze, determined, and for one quick heartbeat she thought he would finally give in.

“I really am sorry for your loss,” he said instead, and as he turned away the tears returned.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> A massive shoutout to @joldiego for betaing this chapter, and also for being a far better writer than me. Seriously, if you haven't read 'you'd almost' believe it you're MISSING OUT.


End file.
